Can Kings make NBA's play-in tournament and still keep their pick?

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So you’re saying there’s a chance?

The Sacramento Kings somehow beat the 62-16 Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday by a final of 120-113, pushing the team to 38-40 on the season. With four games remaining on the schedule, Sacramento is in a battle for a spot in the play-in tournament, although their best case scenario at this point is a nine or ten seed.

If you don’t know the play-in format, it’s a single elimination tournament with the seventh seed in each conference playing the eighth seed to determine the seventh seed in the playoffs. The loser of that game goes on to play the winner of the ninth and tenth place teams with the winner of this matchup moving onto a first round series against the No. 1 overall seed.

Once the play-in tournament is finished and the seventh and eighth seeds for the playoffs determined, the NBA Draft Lottery order is set. The teams that do not make the playoffs become the ninth and tenth spot in their respective conference and are thrown into the lottery based on win/loss record. Play-in wins and losses are not part of the calculation for final standings.

Sacramento has one more game on the road, Monday in Detroit against the upstart Pistons. They return to Golden 1 Center on Wednesday to close out the season with a three game homestand featuring the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers and Phoenix Suns. 

The Pistons, Nuggets and Clippers are either play-in or playoff bound. The Suns trail the Kings in the standings by three games after dropping their sixth straight game Sunday against the Knicks.

If the season were to end today, the Kings would be in the play-in tournament as the ninth seed in the Western Conference, but the last four games could determine a lot more than that.

What’s at stake

This is about to get complicated.

If the standings hold and the Kings enter the play-in tournament, but fail to reach the playoffs, they drop into the NBA’s Draft Lottery as a bottom 14 team. 

Sacramento owes a future first round pick to the Atlanta Hawks for their original Kevin Huerter trade from 2022. That pick is top 12 protected this summer and top 10 protected following the 2025-26 season. If the pick isn’t sent to Atlanta in 2026, it converts to two second round picks, one in each of 2026 and 2027.

The current standings have the Kings finishing with the NBA’s 14th worst record. That means that if the standings hold and the Kings fail to move up into the top four selections on lottery night, their first round pick goes to the Hawks. The 14th pick has a 97.6 percent chance of staying at No. 14 and just a 2.4 percent chance of moving into the top four.

Two weeks ago the Kings finishing 13th or 14th in the overall NBA standings seemed almost a foregone conclusion, but things have changed. With Sacramento struggling at 5-11 over their last sixteen games, they have opened the possibility of making the play-in tournament, but finishing as low as No. 11 in the standings. 

As long as they don’t advance through the play-in with two wins and move to the No. 8 seed, there is still a way to keep their 2025 first round pick, although they’ll need help. 

At 38-40, the Kings are now lumped into a group of teams that include the Dallas Mavericks (38-41), Orlando Magic (38-40), Chicago Bulls (36-42), Miami Heat (35-43) and…the Hawks (37-41), who are all battling for play-in position. The Suns can be thrown into this mix as well at 35-43, although there is a slim path for both Phoenix and Sacramento to make the play-in ahead of the Mavs.

Sunday’s win over the Cavs makes the pathway to keeping the pick narrower, but there is a chance. There is even a possibility that the Hawks finish with more wins than the Kings and cost themselves a chance at Sacramento’s pick.

In short, the Kings need the Eastern Conference teams to continue to win. The more teams that finish ahead of Sacramento in the standings, the better. 

While the Kings have struggled, going 3-7 over their last 10 games, the Bulls and Magic are both 7-3, the Heat are 6-4 and the Hawks are 5-5. All four of these teams are in the play-in and within three games of each other in the standings. 

There aren’t any sure-fire wins remaining on the Kings’ schedule and the only team they have left that is struggling is the Suns. If they finish the year with 38, 39 or even 40 wins, the opportunity exists for Sacramento to both squeak into the play-in tournament and keep their pick, without needing incredible lottery luck.

Of course that would mean that the team didn’t make the playoffs, but with the way that the final quarter of this season has played out, playoffs seem like a long shot at this point.